AngloHaskell/2008

Anglo Haskell has previously happened at Microsoft Research, Cambridge in both 2006 and 2007 much fun was had! For 2008, we think it should happen again, but this time at Imperial College, London. Who's up for it (add names further down)?

This year it's being (un)organised by Matthew Sackman (matthew-_), Tristan Allwood (ToRA) and Ganesh Sittampalam (Heffalump) who all regularly sit on #haskell and #anglohaskell (with nicks in (parenthesis)). Philippa Cowderoy is also prodding the organisers at regular intervals to do some organising...

Date and Venue

We have a suitable sized room booked out at: the Department of Computing, Imperial College London, Huxley Building Room 344, 180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2AZ, UK, on Friday the 8th and Saturday the 9th of August.

The room that we have booked is quite nicely reconfigurable, so we can do break away groups and such or even multiple tracks if there is demand for this.

Details for getting to the Department of Computing and the event room (Huxley 344) are now available. There will likely be some lambdas dotted around Huxley & the walkway to point you in the right direction on the day.

Contact Details

Matthew Sackman: 07970 045 734

Tristan Allwood: 07903 828 660

For Friday, Matthew is the preferred person to ring if you get lost or locked out, for Saturday, ring Tristan.

WiFi

WiFi will be available at Imperial throughout the weekend. There is a simple mac-registration system which you can do through your laptops and all should work without a hitch.

Lodging

It's likely that there'll be people in need of crashspace and so forth. If you need to, please you this area and #anglohaskell to organise where to stay overnight.

Imperial does offer lodging in its halls but they're very expensive. There are some useful contacts if you want to phone and barter. Or, possibly just crashing with friends on floors with sleeping bags and so forth might be simpler and certainly cheaper. Also don't forget that Imperial is about 10 mins walk from South Kensington tube station so public transportation is available if you want to rush home.

Note that parking is both expensive and highly competitive in the surrounding area so it would probably be easier to not drive in. Parking for bicycles is available on campus, provided you have your own bike locks.

Wigram House, one of the Westminster Uni halls, offers its rooms cheap. It's round the corner from Victoria Station, which is two stops along from South Kensington. Rooms can be booked through TravelStay for £28/night + £3 booking fee, or from one of the other broker sites.

Attendees

Per last year, all attendees should bring or make a nametag that identifies you by your real name and/or IRC name. If anyone wants to drag a roll of stickers and a pen along that'll help!

Possible

Programme

Planning will be taking place on IRC as per last year: #anglohaskell on irc.freenode.net

If you're having trouble following things on IRC, the discussion page on the wiki might be a good place to leave comments and questions.

Last year we had talks in the day on a Friday, followed by pubbage in the evening and assorted activities on the Saturday. Again, no one has suggested there's anything wrong with this plan, so we're going ahead.

Friday night dinner

For dinner on Friday, there are many good pubs around Imperial and some really decent pubs across London many of which sell decent PubGastro food. If you want to rush off to meet friends, family etc then that's obviously fine, but if you'd like to stay around for a geeky evening meal then that might be fun.

We're proposing to go up to Giraffe at High Street Kensington which is about a 10-15 minute walk from Imperial. It has a menu which should give some idea - basically if you just have a main and a drink then you can get by for less than £15 which is pretty damn good for that part of London. I (Matthew) have been to this particular Giraffe at least a dozen times over the last 5 years and I do think it's probably the best value for money in the surrounding area.

Dinner is now booked for the following people at 7pm. If you wish to join us, please contact us asap on #anglohaskell. Also, it would be ideal if people could bring cash, so we don't have to irritate them by producing 20 credit cards! You will have to preorder your meal on the Friday morning. Menus will be provided.

Matthew Sackman

Tristan Allwood

Philippa Cowderoy

Tom Harper

Ganesh Sittampalam

Edwin Brady

Neil Mitchell + 1

Neil Brown

Richard Barrell

Eric Kow

Ashley Moran

Ian Lynagh

Duncan Coutts

Simon Marlow

Jim Whitehead

Derek Wright

Saturday

We have the room at Imperial booked here as well and are planning on using it for talks. Later on, if people want a quiet place to Group Hack with access to whiteboards and so forth then it could be used for that. Let's see how many people want to give talks, but other suggestions for Saturday could be noted here too.

Other Thoughts

For potential group hacking on Saturday, we need something to hack on. On what shall we hack?

I have a suggestion, although it's not quite hacking. Could we sit down together and run darcs through the profiler? The outcome I desire from this is (a) a Haskell wiki page showing you how to profile a largeish program and make sense of the output [and act on it] and (b) more insight into darcs performance and (c) more Haskellers working on darcs -- kowey 16:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Talks

It wouldn't be AngloHaskell without some talks, so volunteers please! Previously we have had a largely more practical set of talks than you might find at Fun in the Afternoon or an academic event. This was a good thing, and some of the best talks were from people who were far from considering themselves as experts, so feel free to tell us about your experiences.

The room booked at Imperial has multiple projectors and connections for laptops and so forth. It even has whiteboards.

Friday Lunch

We will be able to provide some food (as-well as tea/coffee/water) for the Friday Lunch spot. Provisionally it will be:

Sandwiches

Mozerella & Sundried Tomato

Egg Mayo

Tuna & Pepper

Chicken & Sweetcorn

Vegetable wraps

Tuna Coquettes

Veg Quiche

Random fruit

Cake

Functional Grit

This is an informal and quick forum to discuss ideas and work - anyone can give a quick (30 seconds to 10 minutes) talk! Feel free to turn up with 2 slides (pdf, usb stick!) and give a quick talk on what you're up to or thinking about. We will organise this further on the day - no need to pre register for this.

Brunch

We're hoping to do this at the Marble Arch Wetherspoons which is a 30 min walk away from Imperial (though across Hyde Park, so should be a nice walk!). They open at 8am and have a selection of food. We apologise for resorting to a Wetherspoon's, but they really are the only suitable place which will be open early enough and will be serving breakfast.